Wednesday, April 6, 2011

One Hour and Twenty Minutes...

That's how long Nathan's tummy could handle the broccoli. :o( I guess we can add that one to his list of foods he can't tolerate. At least we didn't waste a whole week trying it on him. I am, however, very puzzled at how quickly he reacted to it. This is just the beginning of us learning how frustrating EE can be. We are praying for patience to overwhelm us as we tread on through these food trials. I can already see it's going to be a long and not so easy journey. I am going to call Dr. Irani tomorrow. We don't know if we should try another food tomorrow, or if we need to give him a few days for is esophagus/tummy to settle.

By the way, I forgot to include this in my post earlier about the visit with Dr. Irani. In order for a diagnosis of EE to be made the biopsy results must show 15 to 20 eosinophils on a single high powered microscopic field. Dr. Irani told us today that Nathan had 70+ eosinophils in each of the three areas of his esophagus that were biopsied. And that was after being on EleCare for almost a whole week, which she is certain that helped reduce his numbers prior to the biopsy! That really put it in to perspective for me, Nathan doesn't just "kind of" have EE, he most definitely has EE. I know that there is no thing as "kind of" having EE, but as a mother, I was just having wishful thinking that things were on the minor end of the spectrum.

2 comments:

I'm so sorry. Poor kiddo. I would suggest papaya, it's full of L-Glutamine which helps heal digestive tissue damage, loaded with digestive enzymes making it easy to digest and tastes great. All of those things could help make this food a trial success.

Nathan Daniel

Three years old!

What Is an Eosinophilic Disorder?

Eosinophilic gastorintestinal disorders (EGID) are complicated digestive system disorders in which eosinophils, a type of white blood cell, are found in above-normal amounts in one or more specific places in the digestive system and/or the blood.

When the body wants to attack a substance, such as an allergy-triggering food or airborne allergen, eosinophils respond by moving into the area and releasing a variety of toxins. However, when the body produces too many eosinophils, they can cause chronic inflammation, resulting in tissue damage.

How it All Began...

Nathan was a happy and healthy baby boy from the moment he was born. With the exception of many ear infections one after the other from about 4 months of age. Nathan got tubes placed in his ears on November 15, 2011 when he was 9 months old. Finally, we thought, doctors visits and antibiotics every 10 days back to back is over!

His ears were doing great and we were so happy for that, but this is when the daily vomiting began. At first it was once a day, until it progressed to every time he ate and everything he ate. We took him to the pediatrician many times and were told, "he's just got a bug". Many co-pays later our pediatrician suggested we have an upper GI barium swallow done. Mark and I were all for it, we thought, this is it, we are going to have an answer! It showed a pyelorospasm in Nathan's stomach. The pediatrician switched his formula to Alimentum and it was like magic, Nathan was keeping it and his food down again!

We kept Nathan on the Alimentum until January 1, 2011 when we switched him to organic whole milk. Things were wonderful on this.... until daycare called me on Valentine's Day. Nathan had thrown up twice, and I had to go pick him up. At first, I thought... he's got a bug, it's been going around and that's all it is. Four days later, Nathan was still vomiting, I took him to the pediatrician and his advice was to switch him back to the Alimentum for about a week and then try soy milk. Again, the Alimentum was working wonders and the soy was too... for only 2 weeks. Then it began all over again. We switched him back to the Alimentum and to my worst fear... he could not tolerate that anymore either! After a midnight visit to the Emergency Room, and the very next day a visit to KidMed for dehydration, Nathan was able to tolerate Pedialyte only, and he lived off of that until Wednesday, March 16th, when we finally got to see a pediatric GI doctor, Ted Williams.

Dr. Williams, suggested right off the bat that we switch him to an elemental diet, of EleCare, and schedule a upper endoscopy for the following Monday to check for Eosinophilic Esophagitis. What a long weekend it was waiting for Monday to arrive. But it finally came and Nathan did great during the procedure. Then it was more waiting for the biopsy results. Thursday, March 24th the results were in.